Thanksgiving Graces

1. We could afford to rent a car. After last year’s physically uncomfortable and emotionally draining “Fook Seng” “bus,” we had been so looking forward to being comfortably enough financially to rent a car. And, after a month of intense houseguests, just being in the car with Matt for hour after hour, to chat, share, point things out… it was wonderful.

2. My new [additional] family. I have really hit the in-law jackpot. I am constantly aware of how lucky I am– every time I read an advice column, a short story, or talk to colleagues who have crazy or onerous or overbearing or awful in laws. I look forward to seeing them, they make me laugh, they make me feel appreciated, I feel good around them, I would be friends with my sisters-in-law even if we weren’t related, and I look forward to having relationships with Matt’s parents for many, many years. Thanksgiving was just another joyful, fun chance to be with them all.

3. Snow in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. This little town has always felt like a pop-up storybook village to me. The ravine, the waterfalls, the gazebos and shops and Christmas lights. Walking around last weekend, snow began. I immediately got butterflies in my stomach, and felt plain giddy.

4. Enough food! I don’t know where I get this irrational worry/fear, but I often am afraid there “won’t be enough.” Not just food, but also school supplies, money for an errand, pillows… anything you can think of that would be wanted or needed. Sometimes the fear doesn’t articulate itself, but it’s always an old sensation, twitching a little when I want things (like holidays, like family) most. To sit down and be surrounded by more than enough… _and_ “traditional” foods (which I crave*) just felt fantastic.

5. Enough food. Maybe because I teach kids who eat two of their three meals a day, and frequently their only warm meal a day, at school, I try to be mindful about the wealth of food that surrounds me, all of the time. It’s hard to realize how much we have, but we have much.

6. I love the cranberry “sauce” that comes in a can. Turns out, I’m not the only one. Happily, on the very day of Thanksgiving, dear Matt went out in the world, and fetched us all a can. So good.

7. In a previous long-term relationship, the mother of the person I was with didn’t like the fact that I am overweight. She pretty much agonized over it. She couldn’t, for example, bear for me to eat mayonnaise in her presence. At Thanksgiving, I had my own [light] gravy, in my own silver gravy boat, at their finely set table. This Thanksgiving underscored for me once again how different this relationship is (how different I am!).

*My family doesn’t always celebrate the holidays, and when they do, it isn’t always in traditional ways. At one famous Thanksgiving meal, my Mom made Thanksgiving breakfast… all breakfast foods, with the addition of orange Jell-O turkey-shaped Jell-O jigglers. You never know how much you crave the old favorites until you’re eating Grands biscuits, cold scrambled eggs, and Jell-O jigglers.